I’m in Spaaaaaaaaaacceeeeee!

WHEEEE!

Lately, my life has been a little ridiculous. I recently finished Portal 2 (if you couldn’t tell by my title), and I had a conversation with a friend about how, as players, we project our latent feelings onto the character, Chell, who we play as. Throughout both of the Portal games, we are drawn into the role of a “test subject” who, as my friend (in RL and on Youtube) puts into song about LoZ’s Link, is a mute protagonist (see video below).

However, Chell is a mute protagonist beyond Link and other characters who never actually speak, since other characters have expectations. For Chell, all we know is that she is a character who tests and takes crap from GlaDOS. The fact that she does so without so much as a “stop it GlaDOS or I am going to kill you again!” is kind of cool, because it leaves so much to the imagination. You don’t get to see her reaction or what she is thinking, so it lets you do what you want with the character.

What the friend I had dinner with was telling me is that I have been projecting my feelings onto Chell as I played the game. (This part gets a bit spoiler-ish so read at your own risk, otherwise skip the rest of the paragraph.) From the way that we see Chell as a lonely character living the life of the typical everyman, to the way we seem to miss Wheatly for the period where he disappears, and the feeling we first get when GlaDOS incinerates our companion cube, the game never tells us anything – all of these feelings are derived from us, as the players of the game.

In a major way, this odd fact helped me realize the kind of person that I tend to be sometimes, and regardless of what our specific experiences, they seem to tell me one of two things; Chell is a mute everyman, doing these tests without expressing that she gives a fuck, and that we are (either secretly or openly) the kind of person we project onto Chell as we play.

Anyway, I guess that’s the end of that long rant. Hopefully I’ll be posting more frequently. For now though, enjoy a GIF and a video.

 

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Oops. I accidentally shot you. Until you died.

So I’ve been a bit annoyed at everything lately. But the most depressing part of it all has to be the news that has been showing up all over the place.

One of the longer-term stories is that of the shooting of Jordan Manners. At the end of the day, it is a sad story. But it’s also ridiculous because the persons who killed Jordan have (according to CTV News) said that the shooting was an accident. I understand it might have been a lucky shot that went directly at a vital organ or something, but what kind of excuse is “it was an accident?” Considering one could have avoided the firing of the gun by having the safety turned on, or, even better, not having the gun at all, the excuse seems null and void.

On a more local scale, this is a story I was talking to my mother about. One of my brother’s classmate’s mothers committed suicide, and there are rumours about why, but I’m leaving it at depression. I think that as sad as that story is, the reasoning behind everything is kind of weird too. According to my brother, his classmate doesn’t know about what happened to his mother, and is left under the illusion that she was sick. (I’m not quite sure how to finish this point, since it just utterly befuddles me that people would have the audacity to react the way they have.)

The bigger story lately though is Osama bin Laden’s death. I’m not sure why this is as big a story as it is (maybe people are stupid?) but it’s been enough to boost Barack Obama’s popularity. Granted, I don’t have anything against the President, but is it really fair to say that he was the one that deserves all the credit? Of course not.

On a more positive note, I’m trying to get back to sanity.

Catch ya on the flipside.